This patent application relates to devices and methods for determining a location on a body at which an electronic device is worn by a human (or on an animal) and using the determined location to configure functionality and/or operational characteristic(s) of one or more of the electronic devices.
There are an increasing number of electronic devices that can be worn by users. Examples of such electronic devices include health/wellness monitoring (e.g., ECG monitors, Pulse oximeters), fitness applications (e.g., Nike+, Fitbit), head-mounted devices (e.g., Google glass), information displays (e.g., Qualcomm Toq) and entertainment applications. Other wearable devices could include electronic devices embedded into a ring, belt, pendant, hat, clothing or other objects commonly worn by humans on fingers, wrist, forearm, upper-arm, back of the ear, sternum, side, or ankle.
With the rapid evolution of wearable devices, electronic devices that collect multiple biosignals from a human body could be placed anywhere on the body. Contextually aware applications (e.g., a running smartphone app) can make use of the device/sensor location on a body for greater accuracy and power efficiency. There appears to be no known method of automatically identifying where on a human body, a device/sensor has been placed.